


All, All and All, the Dry World Lever

by TheJellyfishEmpire (the_fairweather)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Contemplation of Suicide, Ghost!Lock, Hallucinations, M/M, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-14
Updated: 2012-08-14
Packaged: 2017-11-12 04:40:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/486796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_fairweather/pseuds/TheJellyfishEmpire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the night becomes too much and John Watson isn't sure he exists anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All, All and All, the Dry World Lever

               John Watson is sure that the world is ending.

               At least today he is, like too many other days before it, too many nights, too many hours and seconds and tiny, slivers of minutes of black, tight, neatly ruled sections of time that move too slowly, that seem to go forever, just dark skies and shadows, of lying alone in his bed with nothing but a ghost and the ugly cherry glow of his clock to keep him company.

               John is convinced that the world has already ended, that it's all blown away and he hadn't noticed because it was a _whisper_ , not a _bang_ , a silenced bullet, not a package of semtex tucked into his mailbox.  Time isn't moving, hasn't moved at all since Sherlock's voice in his ear and the taste of asphalt, since a thin wrist with no pulse and a street that was clean the next day, clean with no trace of anything, any of the story, any of the pain, any of the pieces of himself he'd left there, just footsteps on the sidewalk and cigarettes left burning on windowpanes.

               John's been watching his window for what seems like days, and the blinds haven't moved, it haven't shifted in the slightest under his gaze, so it was logical, pragmatic even, to assume that the world has fallen away and this was all a construct in his head in the last seconds before oblivion because he couldn't process any of it, because his feeble, stupid little mind had constructed the only place he'd really _fit_ into, the only place that was _his_ for this last show.

_His and Sherlock's._

               He can't breathe, suddenly, something clamps at his throat and shakes him hard and lets him go just as suddenly, and John can't decide if it actually happened, if any of it actually happened or if the world has been ending for much longer than he thinks it has, and he's been lying in this bed in this empty, imaginary house for all of whatever the proper term for eternity was. But he can breathe again, has never been able to stop breathing, but it's ragged, torn into tiny shreds and shoved inside him, and everything he knows, everything he ever will know wants it to _stop_ , all of it to just leave him here, let him fade and take all of little pieces with him.

               So John Watson _knows_ the world is ending.

               Somewhere deep in the back of his mind, he hears the soft rasp of catsgut on strings tuned in perfect fifths, and how was the back of his mind any different from the front of it now? So he hears it, because he doesn't want to deny it, hears it because he _needs_ to hear it, and it's slinking faintly through his walls from the next room. It was reasonable, the logic of it gnawing at the base of his skull, to expect the ghosts to come like this, for everything he loved – still loves, can't stop loving, despite the salt in his veins, the ache in his leg –  to come flooding so sharply back in these last moments.

               It's Bach, he thinks, vivid and fast and more than faintly sullen, one of his favourites; Sherlock would play it, and it would mirror him too well, all the intensity, all the highs and lows and microsecond pauses in moderation. He'd play it as much in the strings and the varnished wood as much as he would in the tightness in his fingers, the slight curve of his spine, the set of his lip, the flush meet of his eyelids at the height of each arpeggio, the cadence of the next brace of notes. Sherlock would finish and those blue, blue eyes would open and the pale light from the window would burn them white, and he would smile over at John, sitting and staring too blatantly for too long, barely even pretending to read the paper anymore, and John would nod, only faintly, and Sherlock would start the concerto again.

               He waits, John Watson; he waits for five minutes, counted out in seconds and laid on his floor, for reality to crawl back into his skull and for the sound of strings to fade, for his logic and his medical degree to dismiss all of this as insomniac desperation, as another blow of the new brand of PTSD, aural hallucinations as well as the resurgence of the limp. _Five minutes is a lie._ He waits for a long time, more skewed hours and more still curtains, the concerto played over and over and over as he does.

               He can't. He doesn't want to. He wants the world to end, if only to see that face again.

               So he sits up, carefully, fully aware that he's fragile now, paper thin and glass brittle, that sudden moves will send him spilling across the floor and under the cabinet and he doesn't have the strength now to stitch himself back together in time for the morning or whatever promise is left of it. So he sits for another long stretch of nothing, just staring at the wallpaper, the nicks and dents and watermarks, and when he feels like his glass limbs can take it, he stands, slowly and deliberately, and takes a step.

               The pain blossoms in his left knee and he almost falls and there are nailmarks in the varnish of the sidetable as he clutches at it and pants and swallows the sob that threatens to crawl up his throat and past of his lips and there's a scale that skips and bucks and rises through the drywall and glue, patient and demanding all at once. John finds the handle of his cane, blind by more than just the dark, weak from more than just a stumble, and he's scrabbling at the doorknob, jerking it open and spilling instead into the hall, and he tears open the door to Sherlock's not-bedroom, where he spent seconds looking for a particular book or knife or wig, a storage space and not a nest, nowhere he'd want to be, nowhere he's meant to be.

               Planar black and white, reflections where there shouldn't be, and Sherlock's standing there, standing with his violin balanced across his shoulder like something on the edge of a knife, because Sherlock's always been the knife and John's always been the heart, the willing heart, even before they'd met, just two pieces of the same puzzle that just needed time to find each other, and Sherlock looks up when John stumbles in, smiles like he'd smiled at the window, on the first night they'd known each other, when he thought John was looking away.

               "Sherlock – " John manages to gasp it before the Sherlock apparition spreads his arms, the violin on one hand and its bow in the other, the same serene smile on his face, the memory of blue eyes still connected with John's, and he jumps, jumps and hits the floor and _shatters_ into nothing but dust and wind and empty moonlight as John lunges forward and tries to catch him, _this time_ , _this time save him_ and there's nothing but shadows left in his arms, and all he is is the remnants of a man sobbing in the remnants of a world he no longer understands, that's been too cruel to him to ever forgive, that's given him everything he never knew he so badly wanted and ripped it from him just as it started to fit.

               He doesn't know how, doesn't remember the steps, but he's back in his bedroom and his cane's across the room, and his gun is sitting sedately in his lap, under his hands, and he's holding it hard enough that the metal makes marks in his palms and he wonders, John Watson; he wonders if he'd be able to find Sherlock, find him in the rabble of souls, of whatever came after this, if it was kinder just to let go and let the metal take him away, if he really had a choice and this was all just eventuality.

               John Watson brings the gun to his lips.

               _It's cold, harsh ridges against sensitive skin, unfamiliar and intrusive; the gun's always been to the side of his head, to the back of it, pressed there until the marks show, not barely touching the edge of his mouth like a lover, nothing ever this deliberate, this tender._

               John Watson has his finger on the trigger.

_He wonders if he'll feel it. He wonders how hard it will be, how far down the bullet will bite before he doesn't have to think anymore. He wonders what Mrs Hudson will think when she finds his brains decorating the walls, if Lestrade will bat an eyelid, if he'll have to leave the room for a moment and lean over their sink and look at the shadows gouged under his eyes and stubble he's not bothered to take care of this morning, if Harry will visit, or if she'll just go back and drown herself in the bottle, and if he even cares if she does. If he cares if Mrs Hudson screams and cries and wonders what she could've done to save him, if Sally gets any grim satisfaction from this, if she's somehow pleased as she stands over his body that yes, Sherlock Holmes was dangerous, yes, Sherlock Holmes was the death of him and there was no other way he would have it. John wonders if he cares that Anderson is going to be the one to mop up his stains and try to deduce and have no one to contradict him, how that will feel, if Mycroft will even bother to look into this, or if John, minus the Sherlock, is anything more than a military suicide to him anymore, if Mycroft will even hear about him or if all the surveillance on the flat's been lifted and if any fucking one of them will understand exactly_ why _he did it._

               John Watson hopes the world is ending.

               _It's only more proof, the ghost Sherlock, the fall, the gun in his mouth, that it's already done, that there's nothing left, that maybe he's a ghost as well, he's been the ghost all along, and he's done this over and over again, and he hasn't found Sherlock in this sparkling farce of an afterlife and he's just been consigned to this little room, this set of steps and decisions, and he's the only one in this little world and he's only going to repeat this once more once he's done it._

               And then he tastes salt, smells metal, is too reminded of the experiment with the brass powder and the sodium chloride on pig's heads, of Sherlock's unbridled enthusiasm when the brass turned blue and steam that smelled of sweat on skin and half-cooked pork filled the flat, and he's shaking, he's trembling as he'd never before, even in the days after he'd been sent home and the gun lowers itself and goes back in his lap. He has to clamp his right hand over his left wrist, pinch and dig his nails into the fleshy underarm to get himself to stop shaking but it doesn't stop the tears, it doesn't stop the concerto in his head, in the next room, anywhere, nowhere, his hand raising to meet Sherlock's over the distance between the sky and the ground, that distance that's taken everything away from him now.

               He almost laughs aloud at it, all of it, but all he manages is a choked sob, dry and sticking and scraping him raw from the inside out, it's blood and skin on the floor from that laugh, and he runs a hand through his hair, tears at it in the next second and feels his heart rot in its cavity.

               John Watson is sure the world is ending, and welcomes it.

               He doesn't remember what happens next. He doesn't remember the bedsheets and putting his head anywhere but in his hands, but somehow he's tangled in the former and cast astray from the latter as there's a rasp of cloth on cloth across the room, there's a hint of milky, neutral-eyed sunlight peering through the gap that a little wind suggests in the curtains.

               It's morning, and the world is still here.

               He swallows the slimy lump in his throat and he has to close his eyes for a moment to get it to stay down, to make sure they can't come crawling past the sphincter and up his throat, because tears in daylight trivialize things, they're ugly and garish and far too visible, and he sits up slowly, carefully, stands and steps and brushes fingertips against his cane.

               John Watson tries not to be too disappointed.

**Author's Note:**

> Playlist: Shelter [the xx cover] - Birdy.


End file.
